In this chapter, we learn more of Kagome's past... but not all of it.
Edited: 7/9/2011
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.
Dashed Hopes
Chapter Seven: At the Hospital
"Kagome, I have been properly informed of your situation," Sesshoumaru explained to his secretary without even glancing up from his desk. He shuffled his paperwork and filed something away, moving in quick efficient actions.
Startled, Kagome jumped a little where she stood in the doorway, her hands automatically going to the hem of her shirt and twisting the fabric nervously. She had thought her boss had called her into his office to discuss the Belgium project that he had handed off to her the previous day. Unsure of how to respond, she said nothing, dropping her eyes to her feet. As the silence stretched on, Sesshoumaru finally glanced at his secretary, more surprised that the fiery young woman was at a loss for words than her situation with Naraku. With his intense eyes on her, Kagome finally nodded to him, to show that she was in fact listening even if she had not said anything back to him; the stiff gesture was all she could manage since she felt like something was lodged in her throat.
A barely audible sigh escaped the elder Mr. Youkai's lips, and he rolled his words over in his mind before choosing them carefully. "It would be a pleasure to help you out. Having a live-in secretary will likely increase our work load output."
The woman wasn't sure if her boss was attempting a joke or not, so instead she just nodded again and said, very quietly, "Thank you, sir." To reinforce her gratitude, she dipped her head in a shallow bow and backed out of the room, closing the door as she went.
Stunned, Kagome stood outside in the receptionist's area, trying to sort out her emotions. The idea that Sesshoumaru, her boss, a man she had only just met and was trying to hard to impress with her worth ethic, now knew some of her troubled past with Naraku... she wasn't sure exactly how that made her feel, but she knew it wasn't anything good. The easiest emotion to identify was anger, and it was directed at the man working on the floor right above where she stood at the moment.
A storm raising inside of her, Kagome stalked over to the elevator bank and jabbed her finger at the button to call a ride. The more she thought about it, the angrier she became, the idea that her shameful secret was spreading to even more people without her control. If she didn't already feel like a charity case and damaged goods, she definitely felt it now.
The elevator ride was agonizingly slow, and the tinkling music in the background only served to infuriate her all the more. As soon as the doors slid open, Kagome launched herself from them, barging into Inuyasha's office without so much as a knock. "Why did you have to tell him?" she shouted, outraged, slamming both hands on top of his desk.
Inuyasha leaned back into his chair, trying to put as much space between him at the enraged woman as he possibly could, struggling to understand what exactly she was talking about. A truly angry Kagome was far more intimidating than he ever could have guessed.
Not waiting for an answer, Kagome began to pace the maroon carpet like a caged tiger, her hands alternating between being curled into fists and hooked like claws. All the while, she kept yelling, "Damn it, Inuyasha! I worked hard for your brother to see me as a good worker, to respect my decisions. I can't believe you told him about me; now he probably can't see me as an employee anymore, just some scared little girl that needs protection."
Kagome whipped around to glare at the young man just in time to see him sigh in relief, his shoulders actually slumping away from the tension he'd been holding them up with. "This is about Sesshoumaru's respect?" he asked, a smile tugging on the corners of his lips; now that he understood, he could argue back.
"Yes!"
Inuyasha chuckled low, but it was not a happy laugh. "Sesshoumaru doesn't respect anyone. The only person he trusts to do the job right is himself; he respects no one, especially not a lowly employee like a secretary."
Kagome stared incredulously at Inuyasha, her mouth gaping open and the anger draining from her eyes. She worked hard at her job, taking this one as seriously as she had the one in Kyoto. There wasn't anything she didn't tackle without her full attention and determination to get it done properly. Although she was new at the company, that didn't mean she didn't care deeply about it or didn't do her absolute best. It honestly bothered her to think that the boss she had come to respect so quickly for his quick decisions in the office would never respect her.
"Do I really?" a cool voice asked from the doorway.
Inuyasha jumped slightly, snapping his gaze from Kagome to his half-brother. "Shit, Sesshoumaru! Think you could knock every once in awhile?"
"My dearest brother," the elder Youkai man said with only the slightest hint of sarcasm escaping his control. "I can do anything I please."
"Hello, Mr. Youkai," Kagome greeted in a very small voice, fidgeting with her knee-length black skirt as though she was very interested in making it sit just right.
Sesshoumaru kept his eyes on his brother. "Inuyasha, I having a meeting in Kyoto. Please take the time to show Kagome around our house." The slight emphasis he put on the word 'our' did not escape anyone's notice, made all the more serious by his cold, drawling voice.
Inuyasha's lip twitched; it came dangerously close to a scowl. With a good amount of determination, he schooled his expression into a neutral one, shoving down the urge to let loose a string of profanities. With a barely perceptible nod to Kagome, Sesshoumaru swept from the room. Kagome watched him leave with a small triumphant smile on her lips, deciding that actually meant she did hold a little bit of respect. At least from the Youkai brother that really mattered.
"I'm pretty sure he's only happy to have you move in with us because you're young and female," Inuyasha teased spitefully with wide, innocent eyes.
With one last dirty look in his direction, Kagome stormed from his office, deciding resolutely that she would work from her desk on the floor below for the rest of the day. Once she reached the floor below, she sat in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, mentally berating Inuyasha for just having to have the last word in their argument. With a ding! however, the elevator slid back open and a cheerful woman stepped off.
"Hey, Kagome!" Ayame greeted, striding up to Kagome's desk with a wide grin on her face. With each step, her pigtails swayed, somehow adding to the overall vibe of joy radiating off of her.
Shaking off her sour mood, Kagome smiled at her coworker. "Hi, Ayame."
The redhead produced a envelope from a messenger back slung over one shoulder. She laid it down in front of the secretary with a wink. "This goes to Mr. Youkai."
"Which one of them?"
"The intelligent one," Ayame clarified, unable to help herself. She giggled. "I'd give it to him myself, but, well, he's Sesshoumaru Youkai. I think he can actually see into your soul with those eyes of his."
"Sometimes I get that feeling, too. Oh, hey, Sesshoumaru actually just left a few minutes ago for Kyoto," Kagome apologized, picking up the envelope and holding it out to Ayame to take back.
The redhead shrugged however and waved her hand dismissively, indicating she didn't want it back. "I did my job and delivered it on time. Just because he wasn't here to receive it doesn't mean I can get my ass fired! What to get some lunch?"
"Yeah, sure!" Kagome shuffled all her papers into a neat pile and snatched her purse from the bottom drawer. As she started to lead the way to the elevator, Ayame stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
"Shouldn't you go ask Inuyasha if you can go take your lunch break?" Ayame asked, resorting to using his last name to avoid the confusion caused by the fact that both of their bosses had the same last name.
"No way am I doing that," Kagome countered with small frown. A very small surge of anger at his name caused her to hit the 'down' button more harshly than she meant to. Surprised, Ayame tried to decide between laughing and showing concern about what could possibly be a very bad idea for a new employee to take off without alerting her boss. "It's time for lunch, and I get an hour for that everyday. Inuyasha can do his own goddamn filing in the meantime."
The redhead trailed onto the elevator after the other girl with a slightly dumbfounded laugh.
Upstairs in his office, Inuyasha was fuming. He'd called down to Kagome's other desk, but her phone had rung only once before being redirected to her voice mail. The guard at the front desk hadn't seen her, and Sesshoumaru had already left the building. It had only been few minutes since their confrontation, but he was already regretting his joke. Even Inuyasha could recognize that it was in poor taste, but he wished Kagome had a better sense of humor. That morning he'd received a call from Sango reminding him that he needed to watch himself when it came to Kagome; she didn't know him well enough to let his jokes and jabs roll off her shoulders, and even if she appeared headstrong most of the time, she was still dealing with a very fragile situation. As Inuyasha came to stand at his window, he looked down just in time to see a red car go speeding out of the parking lot. Although fifty stories up, he had a bad feeling that he knew who was in the car. Cursing, the businessman remembered that he'd sworn up and down to Sango during their phone call that he wouldn't let Kagome out of his sight.
At WacDonalds, Kagome and Ayame gathered up their wrappers and dumped them in the nearby trashcan.
"Oh shoot!" Ayame said suddenly, snapping her fingers as realization dawned on her. "Do you mind if we use our last half hour to visit my grandpa at the hospital?"
Kagome shook her head with a smile. Suddenly, she pictured her own grandfather in her mind, his wide smile with the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. She missed him fiercely, wishing all it took to see him again was a short walk to a hospital room. Instead, he was miles away in a city that wasn't safe for her to go to. Even worse, it had been years since she had seen him anyway, back before Naraku had become so controlling.
The girls left the fast food restaurant and took to the streets, leaving Ayame's little red car in the parking lot. The tall hospital was visible in the distance, towering over several of the other buildings around it. The short walk left Kagome feeling far less guilty about the greasy cheeseburger and french fries she had just indulged in, and it gave the coworkers plenty of time to get to know one another. Kagome shared stories of Souta and Shippou while Ayame laughed at the descriptions of all the goofy things the boys had done. Once the women reached the hospital, Ayame went straight to the small gift shop on the ground floor, Kagome trailing after her.
Now that they were there, a knot had formed in Kagome's throat; she'd forgotten how much she hated hospitals until she remembered the clinical, sterile smell of it.
"A bouquet of daisies, please?" Ayame told the old woman manning the flower stand. She exchanged some bills from her wallet for the flowers and led the way to the forth floor. "Grandpa broke his hip while sweeping a week ago. His bones are so fragile that the hospital refused to allow him to leave till it was healed," she explained to Kagome as they rode the elevator, missing the tight way Kagome was holding her jaw, which was getting worse the longer they were in the building.
As Ayame continued to yammer on beside her, Kagome closed her eyes and tried to force away the memories that flooded her mind.
"Twenty year old female, critical condition," a male nurse shouted as he rolled the stretcher in. The ambulance's lights were still bright outside, throwing bright colors on walls of the hospital. "Four fractured ribs, large blow to the back of the head, heavy concussion!" he continued to list to the nurses and doctors as they swarmed the patient, running alongside. The woman on the stretcher had long, black hair and heavy blue eyes, barely open. She surveyed the commotion around her with little understanding, struggling to register the bright lights, white walls, and yelling personnel. Breathing with the oxygen mask alone took most of her concentration.
"What's her blood type?" one asked as they drew closer to the operating room, reaching over and lifting one of the woman's eyelids to examine how dilated her pupils were.
"It's O positive," a calm voice said, following at a steady but more controlled clip behind the doctors.
Kagome winced at the sound of his voice.
Sternly, the doctor instructed the man to remain outside the room during the procedure. The waiting room was nearby, and someone would come get him when they knew anything more. Instead of sitting down, the man peered through the small, round window at the operating table as the doctors and nurses worked on his girlfriend, not even flinching at the blood splattering their scrubs. Within an hour, Kagome Higurashi was hooked up to several machines to monitor her vitals. In addition to a blood transfusion, the hospital had to set the bones in her broken wrist and ankle. The casts looked stark white, only a few shades whiter than her pale skin. Her ribs, wrist, and ankle had broken during her fall down the stairs.
The nurse allowed Naraku into the room, watching him sit down on the stool set up next to Kagome's head. The woman slept on, unaware, breathing the slow, deep breaths of someone completely unconscious and heavily medicated. He reached out and took hold of her fragile hand, wrapping his long, callused fingers around it.
"It will never happen again," he whispered soothingly to Kagome once the nurse walked away. "Never, never again."
When Kagome woke up the next day, she believed him.
Kagome shivered at the memory and crossed her arms protectively over her chest, hunching her shoulders. It had been the first time he beat her, but it most definitely wasn't the last. Naraku had had a rough day at the office and came home smelling strongly of whisk y. It was only after he started hitting her that he smiled, a wide, eerie smile that didn't go away until she landed at the bottom of the stairs in a crumpled heap. When she left the hospital a week later, she'd had three broken bones, four fractured ribs, a black eyes, and several bruises and gashes. The only damage her head suffered from her tumble down the steps was a heavy concussion.
She had actually been lucky; she could have snapped her neck.
Lucky, she thought with a bitter smile.
Naraku hadn't beaten her with only his fists. He'd actually used Souta's baseball bat, a small, wooden one that the man had bought for the boy when he went out for little league. Souta and Shippou had been out playing in the yard when the confrontation happened, but when they watched Kagome being hoisted into the ambulance, they looked on with knowing eyes.
Naraku's hate filled eyes and worried expression said it all.
Kagome trudged after her green-eyed friend down the hospital hallway, lost in thought. Suddenly, she jolted to a stop, her heart skipping a beat. Her wide, blue eyes were glued to the square window of the room on the left, recognizing the face of the man she could see through it. Finally realizing that Kagome had stopped walking, Ayame backtracked and stood at Kagome's shoulder, peering through the window, too.
Kagome grabbed the door handle and yanked hard, the force almost making her stumble. She ran to the patient's bed and fell to her knees, snatching up the limp hand that was resting on top of the sheets. Tears welled up and spilled from her eyes, increasing in intensity when the man lying in the hospital bed turned his battered face to her and opened his ice-blue eyes.
"Kagome?" Ayame asked tentatively, reaching out to her friend.
The young man's eyes widened, struggling to focus on the woman kneeling next to his bed. "Kagome?" he gasped, his voice hoarse.
"Yeah, Kouga. It's me," Kagome whispered gently, as if talking any louder would hurt him.
Kouga lifted her hand, the one clasping his own, and rubbed it against his cheek as if to make sure she was really there. Sighing, Kouga broke the news. "He's here, Kagome. He's in Tokyo."
Kagome smiled wryly, "A bit late for that Kouga. He already found me."
Kouga winced at her words and anger filled his eyes. "Did he touch you?" he spat out, disgusted with each word.
Kagome shook her head. "I didn't see him. He talked to Souta and Shippou."
If possible, Kouga became even more enraged. "Did he touch them?" All throughout high school, Kouga had treated Souta like his little brother, doing the things that Kagome just wasn't good at and that Souta had missed out on after their father died. The duo had played catch and learned soccer together. Kouga took the lead in all the manly discussions, relieving Kagome and Mrs. Higurashi of the burden. The idea of Naraku, who had so soundly beaten up Kouga, even laying a single finger on Souta left Kouga breathless with anger.
"No, he never has," Kagome promised quietly.
Kouga nodded, relieved just the slightest bit. "Good."
Kagome asked timidly, "Did he...?"
"I was here to check up on you, to tell you that I covered all of your tracks back home, but he found me first. He's strong. Damn it, he's so much stronger than I could ever have... How could you go through that? I barely lived."
Kagome shrugged, looking troubled. It was true that while she didn't exactly escape Naraku's beatings unscathed, she could have ended up far worse. "He must have wanted to keep me alive."
For several minutes, Kouga kept quiet, his eyes on the wall instead of Kagome. He remembered his discussion with Naraku, how the delusional man had claimed that Kagome loved him, that he loved her. After an internal struggle, Kouga decided not to relay this information to the young woman in fear that it would spark some similar delusion in her. There was no doubt that Kagome was a smart person, but that didn't mean she didn't have her faults. Kagome was type of woman who thought if she could help someone, even a bastard like Naraku, she would try.
"Go to sleep Kouga. Get some rest," Kagome was saying quietly, dragging her friend's attention back to her. "He won't be able to get to you in the hospital. I'm sorry, I really am. I'll be back to check on you whenever I can. Thank you for your help and... please, don't worry about me."
Kouga nodded and slowly drifted off into sleep, his hand still holding her tightly. Once his breathing evened out, Kagome unraveled their fingers and stood up, stepping away from the bed. With a look at Ayame, the two women silently left the room and walked side-by-side to Ayame's grandfather.
The redhead's eyes were troubled. She kept glancing at Kagome but kept her mouth shut, torn between asking in order to understand better and wanting to not understand at all. Firmly, she hoped that she was doing the right thing when she decided to let it all go. As she put her hand to the handle of her grandfather's room, Kagome stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
"Someday, I'll tell you everything. I swear. It's just not a good idea right now," Kagome promised.
The green-eyed woman nodded and pasted on a bright smile, finally opening the door to her awaiting grandfather.
When Inuyasha stalked into the hospital half an hour later, angrily running his hand through his hair to the point where it started to tangle, the irritation radiating off him drew the attention of almost everyone he passed. "Damn it," he cursed under his breath, his eyes scouring the ground floor, looking for a familiar head of black hair and wide, blue eyes. To his surprise, when the elevator doors slid open, Kagome stepped off them. "Kagome!"
Naturally, hushing noises erupted around him due to his shout, but he easily ignored the personnel.
Kagome stopped in her tracks, studying him and registering his upset expression and tightly fisted hands. His eyes were spitting sparks at her from across the room, and the way he'd shouted... With a sigh, Kagome approached him, her head tilted downward. "Inuyasha? What are you doing here?"
"You disappeared!" he accused hotly, grabbing her shoulders and spinning her around on the spot, looking for injuries. She was, after all, in a hospital.
"I did not!" she protested, wrenching herself out of his grip. She put her hands on her hips and leaned in closely, very close to poking him in the chest to help make her point. "I was with Ayame the whole time!"
"Yeah, that's not an excuse," he snapped, glaring at the redhead who had followed Kagome off the elevator. In response, she shrugged innocently. There was no reason to fear for her job just because she took her friend out to lunch, was there?
"Inuyasha," Kagome began slowly.
His glare increased tenfold. "What?" he barked when she didn't complete her thought.
Kagome sighed, sounding very tired. "Let's just get out of here. I hate hospitals," she muttered. Without a backward look, she walked past him and towards the automated glass doors, breathing easier once she was out in the fresh air. Ayame and Inuyasha followed, him with his hands jammed deep into his pockets. "I was just on my lunch break," Kagome snapped, her energy (and her anger) growing with every step away from the depressing building.
"You are supposed to report to me when you take your lunch break!"
Kagome and Ayame glanced at each other and giggled, remembering their conversation just before they hopped on the elevator back at the company building.
"Sounds like you were worried about Kagome," the green-eyed woman stated slyly.
"What?"
Kagome's giggles were reinforced at Inuyasha's outcry, and they increased in volume when he began to blush. "Ayame! Look! You embarrassed the poor guy," she pointed out. Unable to help herself, Ayame broke down into laughter, too, but she excused herself to find her car before Inuyasha overcame his discomfort.
With one last look at the wordless Inuyasha, Kagome trotted after her. Under her breath, she mumbled logically, "He was probably just worried about Sango getting upset with him, not about me."
Inuyasha heard her, but he squashed any feeling of wanting to correct her assumption. Let her believe what she wants. He shrugged to himself and left in the opposite direction, towards his own car. He followed Kagome and Ayame on their short walk back to Ayame's little red car in the restaurant parking lot, and then tailed them all the way back to the company. During the drive, he thought about Kagome, reviewing all the different personalities he'd seen her display. Which one was the real Kagome, the person she was before everything with Naraku happened? The cheerful, loving Kagome? The angry, spiteful Kagome? The sad, depressed Kagome? Or even the scared, defenseless Kagome?
It was frustrating not being able to get a read on a person, a friend of his friends and his very own secretary. In the end, he decided he didn't really care who Kagome was.
Next Chapter: Memories
